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Abraham ffitnniltt 



WITH COMPLIMENTS OF 

W. IS, 

ROCHESTER, N. Y.. 




,/TOi^^/ <3LC4^c^r^ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVER HI) RY 



W- MARTIN JONES 



Phoenix, N, Y< 



The Thirtieth Day of May t \ 904 



PRESS OF K. W. EACE 

ROCHESTER, X. V. 

I904 



Gift 
Au;h< r 
(Pertoi 

24 M 



.8 



INTRODUCTK >N. 

Yielding to repeated solicitations of friends 
I have had the following address on Abraham 
Lincoln put in print. As a mere brochure on 
the life of the most eminent American of his 
century, the address might well be material 1\ 
altered, but I prefer to print it as I delivered it— 
without amendment or addition. I seek only to 
make the book suitable for presentation to 
friends, and, as a leaf from the history of a most 
interesting and eventful period, I take pleasure 
in placing it in their possession. 

The picture facing the title page is, in my opin- 
ion, the best likeness extant of Abraham Lincoln. 
It occurs to me that the book will hardly be com- 
plete without it. The autograph is a reproduc- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln's signature as it was affixed 
to a commission at the Department of State 
only a few days before that sad Good Friday in 
1865, that witnessed the tragedy at Ford's 
Theater. From personal knowledge I believe 
I am justified in saying that Mr. Lincoln signed 
all official documents with his full name. I do not 
remember to have seen any such paper bearing 



INTRODUCTION 

his signature with his first name abbreviated. 
It was a frequent occurrence, however, for him 
to sign his name "A. Lincoln " to letters and 
other unofficial documents, but when the matter 
was of a distinctively official character the name 
was written as indicated by the signature, — 
Abraham Lincoln. 

The labor of preparing this address on the life, 
work and character of the great emancipator, 
and of putting it in print, has been a labor of 
love — love for the remnant of the " Boys in 
Blue " who invited me to speak to them, a mere 
fraction of the great Union Army, with many 
divisions of which I camped on tented fields 
when stern visaged war was our bed-fellow, and 
love for the great hearted patriot whose beautiful 
life has become a benediction to the nations and 
is the equal heritage of every American Freeman. 

The Author. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



This day is consecrated. Decorated with 
beautiful flowers, moistened with patriotic tears 
and hallowed in loving, throbbing heart beats, it 
is unique as well as national in the American 
calendar. Annually we gather in loving re- 
memberance of the noble men- — now just over the 
way — who went out more than forty years ago to 
maintain national integrity and to demonstrate 
to the world that the last great effort of a free 
people to govern themselves was not — what 
despotism had prophesied— a gigantic failure. 
We have come a long way from the days when 
the clarion notes of the war bugle sounded clear 
and loud along the valleys and over the hill and 
mountain tops, of this fair land, calling men from 
the work-shop and the field, boys from the 
counting-room and the class-room, to put on the 
"Blue" and march to a country's salvation. But 
time cannot efface the memory of those Spartan 
scenes. As I stand here to-day looking into the 
bronzed faces of the remnant of those brave men, 
who responded to that call it all comes to me 
anew. Time seems turning backward in its 
relentless forward march. I am again a boy in 

5 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

my teens, poring over problems that puzzle 
pupils, ransacking lexicons for solutions of mys- 
tifying maxims, and trying diligently to accom- 
plish results that seemed then to me to be so far 
beyond human attainment. Again I witness the 
exciting political campaign of the memorable 
year i860. Again I hear the drum beat and see 
the marching columns of voters as they pass in 
review before excited multitudes, preparing for 
the battle of the ballots. I hear the bells ringing 
and the shouts that proclaim the victory of a 
party that was bold enough and true enough and 
strong enough to declare that there must be no 
further extension of slave territory on the con- 
tinent governed by this nation. I catch from 
day to day startling news that comes over the 
wires from the Land of the Palmetto ; I hear 
the report of the gun that fires on the American 
Flag in Charleston Harbor, and I see the pre- 
parations of an awakened people, as men gather 
for the purpose of demonstrating that this Union 
must live and that the great problems set for 
solution on this continent must be worked out 
by the patient labor of free men. Then, I see 
the marching thousands as they go on to the 
conflict in the South and now — away in the year 
1904 — I am looking into the faces — no longer 
with round and ruddy cheeks — of some of those 
who went out under such circumstances to do 
their duty at the front and who, alone of the 
vast numbers that responded so promptly, so 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

generously and so patriotically to the call of the 
country in its hour of peril, arc left to com- 
memorate the scenes of those days that tried 

men's souls. 

It has come to be a recognized principle among 
men and nations that in an hour of peril, when 
men and nations need a leader, God raises up 
one made of just the right material for the 
circumstances. So it was in the dark and stormy 
period of the American Revolution. I need not 
name the Father of his country. So it was in 
the days of the French Revolution. Napoleon 
Bonaparte was the fruit of the civilization that 
preceded him. He has been judged by history, 
yet I sometimes feel that he may have been 
misjudged by history, but, be that as it may, he 
was of the mettle that was required to blaze the 
way for the future France. He did it, but his 
ambition was of that character that led him into 
excesses and, eventually, left him stranded on 
St. Helena. Time came, later when on this 
continent one was needed to serve a people in 
their hour of peril, — a man of cool judgment. 
conscientious purpose, patriotic motives, un- 
daunted by fear, unmoved by malice and un- 
touched by ambition. There were man)- men oi 
the period who could have done nolle work but 
it is a grave question now, as we look back to 
those days over a period of forty year- interven- 
ing, whether in all the land, there was another 
who, under all the circumstances, and burdened 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

by the conditions that beset the Nation at the 
time of the opening of the conflict in the year 
1861, could have performed the duties of a leader 
in such a perilous moment, as perfectly and as 
successfully as did Abraham Lincoln. Born of 
poor parentage, in a Slave State, migrating at an 
early age into a non-slaveholding State, on the 
border between two classes of civilization, he had 
little opportunity in his early life to solve the 
great problems that were demanding the 
attention of the thinking men of the nation. He 
spent his early days in a condition little removed 
from want and wretchedness but there was 
implanted within the man that keen sense of 
justice, tempered with mercy, and tempered yet 
again with a great fund of humor, that prepared 
him magnificently for the gigantic work that lay 
before him. 

In order fairly to understand the circumstances 
under which his early days were spent, it becomes 
necessary to glance briefly at the state of society 
and the conditions that prevailed along the Ohio 
border. Due to the proximity of the border free 
states north of the Ohio River to slaveholding 
territory, the people of that section were brought 
face to face with many of the evils growing out 
of the peculiar institution across the river. The 
frequent coming into the Free States of escaping 
bondmen forced upon the northern whites a 
startling contrast between the conditions that 
existed in slave territory and American civil- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ization, as it was sought to be nurtured and 
cultivated north of the Ohio River. 

Necessarily, the attention of Abraham Lin< oln 
was directed from time to time to these con- 
ditions, and, possessing a keen sense of justice 
and right, he was not long in coming to tin- 
conclusion that a great wrong was being 
committed in the enslavement of human beings 
on this continent. As early as the year 1820, 
the minds of men began to turn to a consider- 
ation of these conditions. Along this border 
line and within free territory, men's interests 
prompted them to lean toward the aristocrasy of 
the South. The merchants of border cities 
found their best customers coming from south of 
the Ohio river and people of wealth and those 
seeking influential associations found it to their 
advantage, in one way and another, to sympathize 
with the slaveholder who had lost his slave on 
free territory and give him aid in his endeavor to 
regain his fleeing property. We are. all familiar 
with the crisis that came to Lane Seminar}', in 
the suburbs of Cincinnati, and over which, that 
fearless champion of human rights, Lyman 
Beecher of Connecticut, once presided. Here 
also, lived his daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
whose husband was an instructor in the Sem- 
inary, and here she became familiar with the 
peculiar institution, which enabled her sub- 
sequently to strike a blow for freedom that has 
never been surpassed by any writer of fiction. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Out of this crisis that came to Lane Seminary 
came the establishment of the well-known 
Abolition School at Oberlin. Then appeared 
upon the political landscape a character, whose 
personality has been stamped indelibly upon the 
civilization of that period, — James G. Birney. 
He, too, was a Kentuckian by birth, was once a 
slaveholder, but, yielding to his own awakened 
conscience, renounced the system, set his own 
slaves free and devoted his life and all he 
possessed in the world to secure the manumission 
of slaves in America. Men began to think on 
these questions very earnestly. Like Banco's' 
ghost, the subject would not "down." It would 
rise in the most unexpected places. One, a little 
bolder than another, with fixed opinions and 
conscientious purposes, would speak his senti- 
ments and instantly the community was in a 
tumult. The spirit of compromise possessed 
politicians, but compromise was inadequate. It 
had become indeed an "irrepressible conflict." 
The forties came and went, the Missouri 
compromise was adopted and abandoned, the 
last great compromise of Henry Clay, in 1850, 
that was to settle all troubles, was forced to its 
conclusion, and yet the conflict was still 
irrepressible. He who was most affected by all 
these contests refused to be content while still 
held in unwilling bondage, and nightly, with his 
eye on the north star, and daily, with his know- 
ledge that the moss grew on the north side of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the forest tree, he followed his wear) road to 
freedom. Some of us here to-day remember 
how in childhood we listened with rapl attentii n 
and with hearts burning in hatred oi the 
institution, while the poor slave on his \v;i\ to 
freedom by the underground railroad told oi his 
wrongs and showed us the marks of his cruel 
treatment. Some of us, too, have probably seen 
the institution as it was, and have touched hands 
with the poor sons and daughters of Africa as 
they toiled early and late in the fields of the 
Southern owner with no compensation for their 
labor other than the rags they wore and the 
coarse food they received to keep soul and b< dy 
together. 

The fact, however, existed, that as a Confeder- 
ation the people of the states respectively held 
control over this question exclusively. Recog- 
nizing the fact that slavery existed in all the 
colonies of the confederation prior to the 
Revolution that separated them from the mother 
country, we find a reason for the retention of the 
system in a climate that required the services oi 
men who were able to withstand conditions that 
were supposed to be beyond the endurance of 
the white race. The people of the South were 
brought up in the conscientious belief that 
slavery was a condition for the black man 
superior to that of freedom. In slavery he was 
cared for in childhood and in old age, while in 
the period between he only paid for his care and 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

maintenance in the beginning and in the ending 
of his career. The South chose to continue 
slavery, while the North chose to abolish it. It 
was entirely in the hands of the respective colon- 
ies and the South could with propriety say to the 
North that it was a matter that the North had 
nothing to do with ; that the South came into 
the Confederation as separate and independent 
states or nationalities ; that slavery was a legal 
institution, that it existed in these separate colon- 
ies and states at the time of the adoption of the 
First Articles of Confederation and was recog- 
nized in the Constitution in 1787; that as 
so recognized these states became a part and 
parcel of the Confederation ; that they came 
into it as independent municipalities, that they 
resigned to the general government no power on 
the subject of slavery within their respective 
borders and that they could not be interfered 
with by other members of that compact. There 
was very much in this argument. It was sound 
from the position occupied by the Southern 
States. The Constitution so far recognized the 
institution of slavery that it provided that no law 
should be enacted prior to the year 1808, that 
should prohibit the traffic in slaves from Africa. 
It was known and understood that at the time of 
the making of this federal union there was a 
business being carried on across the sea whereby 
men and women were being brought from Africa 
and sold into bondage on the Western side of the 

12 



ABR \ii\.\I MNl <>I.N 

Atlantic, and it is also a well recognized fad thai 
much of this traffic was carried on by ship-owners 
and navigators who came from Northern states, 
and who plied the traffic for the benefit of 

Southern slaveholders because, in doing it, they 
reaped a large profit themselves, And so, while 
there was an evident desire on the part of mam 
members of the Convention that framed the Con- 
stitution under which we are living to-day, to 
blot out the remembrance even of a traffic in 
human flesh across the sea, there was, neverthe_ 
less, an element in the South, where they felt 
that they needed more laborers to hold on to that 
traffic, and it was only upon a compromise that 
it was finally agreed that this traffic should be 
prohibited at the end of twenty years. Accord- 
ingly, it must be admitted by all candid men that 
the Union of the States could not then have 
been accomplished on the basis finally agreed 
upon except it had been upon such a compromise 
as would admit into the Union communities that 
believed in slavery and in continuing it in some 
portions of the Confederacy. These facts we 
must recognize, when we come at this late day, 
more than forty years after the final outburst 
between the two sections, to consider the condi- 
tions that then existed and rightly and properly 
to understand the duties that necessarily devolved 
upon men who were placed in responsible posi- 
tions over the entire nation. 

While Abraham Lincoln had been educated in 

13 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the severe school of adversity and want, when he 
was forced, in gaining- a livelihood, to navigate flat 
boats on the shallow streams of the West and to 
split rails in farm work, he was also familiar from 
his childhood with the peculiar institution of 
involuntary servitude. 

I venture the statement that there never was 
a time when he did not absolutely abhor the 
institution of slavery. His soul revolted with 
righteous indignation at even the thought that 
one man could legally hold title to another. Yet, 
he was himself, a poor boy, born under circum- 
stances that left but a thin parting between the 
ways of the poor white man and the colored 
slave. At the time when Abraham Lincoln came 
to be identified in any manner with public affairs 
in the nation, there had come to be great agitation 
over the further extension of slavery in the 
country. If the discussion could have been kept 
down to the question of laws and the Constitu- 
tion, the South and the slaveholding aristocracy 
had the advantage of title to the peculiar institu- 
tion by undisputed recognition on the part of all 
the rest of the Nation and on the part of the 
Constitution itself, and they held, what has 
always been regarded as nine points out of ten of 
the law, possession, absolute and recognized, of 
the institution itself. Accordingly, when such 
bold men as Burney and Garrison and Phillips 
and a host of others forced the issue of free 
speech, free soil and free man, and denounced 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

slavery as a cruel wrong, not to say a wasteful, 
demoralizing, murderous and soul-destroying 
institution, the South felt, and, naturally, from 
their standpoint believed, that the other portion 

of the Confederation was taking a course that 
was unjust, inequitable and unfair toward them. 
They believed sincerely that they were enjoying 
the highest fruits of human civilization and that 
they were far in advance of the people of the 
North, who, themselves, did senile labor in the 
field, while the Southerners sat in the shadows of 
the palmettos and the black men did the labor for 
both. They were forced into the arena to del end 
their institution, and they took the high -round 
as they believed it to be, of claiming that slavery 
was a divine institution, that it was democratic 
and civilizing. Then they rested, under the 
Constitution, behind the bulwark of state rights, 
for it must be conceded that the general govern- 
ment, under the system thus incorporated into 
its organic law in the forming of the Confedera- 
tion, had no power over the institution of slavery 
in the several states which chose to maintain it. 
The difficulty with the whole matter lay in the 
arrogant position of the slaveholder, when he 
declared that the general government owed to 
him the duty of protecting the peculiar institu- 
tion, not only within slave state lines but as well 
without, when he chose to go with his human 
property into jurisdictions where slavery was not 
recognized but strictly prohibited. This was 

15 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

leaving his own entrenchments, behind which he 
was reasonably secure, and coming out into the 
open where the abolitionist and those who were 
opposed to human bondage had prepared to meet 
him. The South demanded the abrogation of 
free speech. It insisted that the postoffice, and 
all the power that rested within it, should be 
turned to the protection of the slaveholders and 
that men should be punished for sending incen- 
diary matter through the mails, and delivering it 
at offices south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
There were extreme men on both sides. There 
were those in the North who insisted that the 
Union must be dissolved in order to dissolve a 
co-partnership unwillingly existing between slave 
and free states. It is unnecessary to go over the 
arguments advanced by either party in the con- 
troversy that began in earnest when John Ouincy 
Adams, the Old Man Eloquent, unaided and 
alone, fought the battle of the right of petition 
on the floor of the House of Representatives. 
As we glance along the pages of our history dur- 
ing this period we see names that attract us and 
we would gladly dwell upon them but the occasion 
will not permit. Neither need I dwell upon 
incidents that brought to the national conscience 
in unmistakable manner the evils and sufferings 
that were being inflicted upon human beings by 
that great wrong in fair sunny southland. 

Under other circumstances I might pause to 
tell you the stories of Matilda Lawrence and 

16 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Margaret Garner. It is enough to know that 
these were among the incidents growing out of 
the wrongs inflicted upon the poor black men ol 
the south and their attempts to gain their much 
coveted freedom. I would not unnecessarily 
call up unpleasant memories— especially in this 
day of good feeling and good fellow-ship — and 
yet, if we are properly to understand conditions 
that developed character, that made men and his- 
tory and heroes, we must con our lessons carefully. 
Effects are the natural sequence.-, of causes. We 
cannot study the one and neglect the other. 

" A dreamer dropped a random thought ; 'twas old, and 
yet 'twas new ; 
A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true. 
It shone upon a genial mind, and lo ! its light became 

A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame. 
The thought was small ; its issue great ; a watchfire on 
the hill, 
It sheds its radiauce far adown, and cheers the valley 
still ! 

"A nameless man, amid the crowd that thronged the 
daily mart. 
Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the 
heart ; 
A whisper on the tumult thrown, — a transitory breath, — 
It raised a brother from the dust ; it saved a soul from 
death. 
O germ ! O fount ! O word of love ! O thought at random 
cast ! 
Ye w^ere but little at the first, but mighty at the last." 

My purpose is sufficiently attained by referring 
17 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to these sad incidents in our national life as 
among the circumstances that awakened the 
consciences of men. It is good that we may 
forget. It is good that Time heals wounds. It 
is good that the children do not always see with 
the eyes of the parents. " I cannot bring myself 
to believe," said a fair, sweet Kentucky miss of 
sixteen recently, "that my grandfather ever 
owned a man." Do not try to believe it, my 
dear child, do not try. It is all a horrible dream 
and let us forget it together. 

But the subject of our study to-day is a char- 
acter that was formed to meet conditions existing 
more than forty years ago. The scenes and 
incidents of that period left their mark upon the 
man and prepared him for the future. The 
wrongs the poor black man suffered appealed 
forcibly to the mind and heart and conscience of 
Abraham Lincoln. It cannot be said that he 
was not an ambitious man, but his was an ambi- 
tion to minister to others, rather than to himself. 
He sought to serve the public well. He early 
became active in political life. He showed his 
qualifications as an organizer in more than one 
political campaign. He came to be recognized 
in the community where he lived as a leader. 
When he entered into a movement, whatever it 
was, he put his whole soul, his whole being into 
it. It became a part of him. He possessed a 
fund of originality that carried him onward and 
upward continually. One of his strongest points 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in debate was to meet argument with anecdote, 
which itself, was an unanswerable argument 
when it came fresh from the lips and hearl oi 
the great commoner. In a way he was an 
orator. I need only refer to his numerous 
addresses to show this and I think no living 
to-day would dare den}- it. Many of his expres- 
sions are epigrammatical, terse, to the point by 
the shortest line, absolutely unanswerable and 
convincing by the force of the purity of tHeir 
logic. No man uttered a truer sentence than 
that pronounced by Abraham Lincoln in a speech 
delivered by him two years before he was nomin- 
ated for the Presidency, when he said, "A house 
divided against itself cannot stand." This, it is 
true, was but a quotation but when he followed 
it up with the sentence, " I believe this Govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently half slave and 
half free," he gave utterance to an axiom. It 
was another way of proclaiming the " irrepress- 
ible conflict." And then he followed up his 
axiom with a statement that could leave no doubt 
in the minds of his auditors where Abraham 
Lincoln stood in that conflict. "I do not," he 
said, "expect the Union to be dissolved, — I do 
not expect the house to fall, — but I do expect 
it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents 
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and 
place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion ; or its advocates will push it forward, till 

19 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it shall become alike, lawful in all the states, old 
as well as new — North as well as South." Here 
was the issue in a nutshell. He little thought 
when he stood in his place in Springfield, that 
day in 1858, that upon him Abraham Lincoln, 
would devolve such momentous duties as would 
follow the election of i860. And he as little 
thought that with him bye and bye must rest the 
decision that would save the house from falling 
and would lead to a condition where the house 
would cease to be divided. 

We pass quickly the days of his great debate 
with Stephen A. Douglas, the little giant of the 
West, and we come down to a period following 
the election in i860, and his safe arrival in the 
City of Washington. There on the 4th day of 
March, 1861, on the east steps of the National 
Capital, he delivered to the world an address that 
comes clown to us to-day replete with soul 
inspiring, heart-rending remembrances. When 
that address was delivered I was still the school 
boy in my teens, wrestling with unsolved prob- 
lems. It had not then been my privilege to 
touch the hem of the garment of the great man 
who on that memorable day took the oath of 
office of President of the United States, but, 
sitting in the quiet of my room I read over and 
over again his passionate appeal for peace and for 
nationality that I knew came from the very soul 
of an honest patriot. I felt in my own heart that 
the heart of Abraham Lincoln was the true 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

heart of the Nation. I felt that in the man who 
gave utterance to such sentiments th< cai 
justice, right and national liberty could be reposed 
with perfect confidence in the result. Later I 
came to know the man well and I found him 
even grander and truer and nobler than I had 
pictured him in my own mind to be. 

Let us turn back several pages of our histor) 
for a moment while I read a few sentences from 
the immortal Inaugural address. With what 
pathos he dwells upon the duty that all, both 
North and South, owed to the Union. How 
carefully he points to the characteristics that 
make the Government Federal in its character, 
yet a single nation ; and with what exceeding 
nicety he demonstrates the fact that the States 
cannot be severed from one another ; that the 
Union is a Union for all the future and the South 
as well as the North owe allegiance, service and 
devotion to the central government under the 
compact that brought them together into one 
system. In the closing paragraphs he especially 
appeals to the men of the South to think calmly 
and well upon the whole subject before they take 
any rash action in opposition to the federal 
authority. The two closing paragraphs read 
to-day not like ordinary sentences that we gather 
here and there among the noted speeches of the 
world, but rather like prophecy. "In your 
hands," he said, "my dissatisfied fellow-country- 
men, and not in mine, is the momentous issue 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of civil war. The Government will not assail 
you. You can have no conflict without being 
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath 
registered in Heaven to destroy the Govern- 
ment, while I shall have the most solemn one to 
'preserve, protect and defend it.' " 

" I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, 
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained it must not break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic chords of 
memory, stretching from every battlefield and 
patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as 
surely they will be, by the better angels of our 
nature." 

While Abraham Lincoln had able advisers, 
many of whom I knew personally and intimately 
and whose memory I cherish deadly, yet I would 
emphasize the fact that Abraham Lincoln was 
President. He listened to advice ; if it appealed 
to him as wise and judicious he promptly and 
frankly accepted it. He recognized the fact in 
the early days of his administration that there was 
coming to him a trial such as no other man had 
ever experienced. Here was the last great effort 
of a people to establish free government. There 
were not few to prophesy that the experiment 
would be a failure. Like an echo of the first 
shot of the rebellion, rebounding from the chalk 
cliffs of old England, and as quickly as the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

returning waxes of air could bring it ba< k : 
own shores, came the murmur of satisfai i ion and 

rejoicing at — what was then taken as an estab 
lished fact — our national dissolutii >n. M r. J ustin 
McCarthy, the author of "The Histor) o 
own Times," tells us that, "The vast majoi 
what are called the governing classes were on 
the side of the South. London club life was 
virtually all Southern. The most powerful papers 
in London and the most popular papers as well, 
were open partisans of the Southern confedera- 
tion." A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for 
November 1861, says: "We have read at 
three English newspapers for each week ti. 
passed since our troubles began ; we have been 
a reader of these papers for a series of years. In 
not one of them have we met the sentence or 
the line which pronounces hopefully, with bold 
assurance for the renewed life of our Union. In 
by far the most of them there is reiterated the 
most positive and dogged averment that there i> 
no future for us." A writer in the Edinburgh 
"Quarterly Review" said, "We believe the 
conquest of the South to be a hopeless dream, 
and the reunion of the states in one all-powerful 
republic an impossibility. There is verge and 
room enough on the vast continent of America 
for two or three, or even more, powerful repub- 
lics, and each may flourish undisturbed, if so 
inclined, without being a source of disquiet to its 
neighbors. There will be no loss of anything 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which conduces to the general happiness of man- 
kind. For the contest on the part of'the North 
now is undisguisedly for empire." 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, who 
wrote most enticing stories, but who was born 
and bred under monarchial institutions, could not 
conceal his sentiments. Not long after the 
attack on Fort Sumter, he said, " I venture to 
predict that the younger men here present will live 
to see not two, but at least four, separate and 
sovereign commonwealths arising out of those 
populations w r hich a year ago united their legis- 
lation under one president and carried their 
merchandise under one flag. I believe that such 
separation will be attended with happy results 
to the safety of Europe and the development of 
American civilization. If it could have been 
possible that as population and wealth increased, 
all that vast continent of America, with her 
mighty sea-board and the fleets which her increas- 
ing ambition as well as her extending commerce 
would have formed and armed, could have 
remained under one form of Government, in 
which the executive has little or no control over 
a populace exceedingly adventurous and excit- 
able, why, then America would have hung over 
Europe like a gathering and destructive thunder 
cloud. No single kingdom in Europe could 
have been strong enough to maintain itself 
against a nation that had consolidated the gigantic 
resources of a quarter of the globe." 

24 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

• 

The Karl of Shrewsbury said : " I see in 
America the trial of democracy and its failure. 
I believe that the dissolution of the Union is 
inevitable, and that men now before me will live 
to see an aristocracy established in America." 

All these utterances came to the knowledge 
of Abraham Lincoln, lie saw clearly the I 
road before him. Mr. Seward was at the head 
of the foreign department. The magnii 
service he rendered the nation there is known 
and admitted. With what a firm hand he held 
our diplomatic officers up to a high standard in 
their intercourse with foreign states, we know 
and we read as a part of the history of that 
eventful period. For example, he said, to Mr. 
Charles Francis Adams, when setting out to his 
mission at The Court of St. James, — "You will 
in no case listen to any suggestions of comprom- 
ise by this government under foreign auspices, 
with its discontented citizens. If, as the 
president does not at all apprehend, you shall 
unhappily find her majesty's government tolerat- 
ing the application of the so-called seceding 
states, or wavering about it, you will not leave 
them to suppose for a moment that they ran 
grant that application and remain the friends of 
the United States. You may even assure them 
promptly in that case that if they determine to 
recognize, they may at the same time prepare 
to enter into an alliance with, the enemies of 
this republic. You alone will represent your 

25 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

country at London, and you will represent the 
whole of it there. When you are asked to divide 
that duty with others, diplomatic relations 
between the government of Great Britain and 
this government will be suspended, and will 
remain so until it shall be seen which of the two 
is most strongly entrenched in the confidence of 
their respective nations and of mankind." 

It is well known that not only was this strong 
language known to Mr. Lincoln but that sugges- 
tions were made by him in its preparation. We 
know how Confederate privateers, sent out from 
British ports, preyed upon the commerce of the 
nation and we know how excellent a bookkeeper 
Mr. Seward was and how carefully he kept the 
account that was afterward fully adjusted and 
audited at Geneva. It is not too much to say, 
and in saying it no credit due to William H. 
Seward and his magnificent administration of our 
foreign relations during that period is taken from 
him, that Abraham Lincoln was at the helm of 
the Ship of State ; that while he may not have 
formulated diplomatic instructions, he may not 
have watched constantly over these relations as 
his sleepless Secretary did, yet he was continu- 
ally and closely in touch with every step taken in 
respect to them. 

It is well, in this connection, that we do not 
overlook the fact, that in those gloomy days of 
our peril, there was one nation in all the group 
of foreign powers that had a kind word to say to 

26 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN- 
US. Whatever betide in the changing oi the 
map of the eastern hemisphere, we will nevei 
forget the timely acts of Russia when this nation 
was passing through the dark and stormy days 
of the slaveholders' Rebellion. It may have 
been an anomalous international condition that 
would bring to free America in her struggle for 
national existence friendly relations with the 
most despotic government in the world; but. 
whatever the circumstances were, whatev< r 
conditions existed, it is nevertheless the fact 
that when other leading nations of Europe were 
deliberating upon the proposition of recognizing 
the independence of the so-called confederacy, 
and had even resolved upon such a course, 
Russia sent her ships of war to the American 
sea board, bearing sealed orders, a menace to the 
nation that dared to frown upon the young repub- 
lic. A Russian admiral, while sojourning in the 
port of New York, was asked by one of our own 
admirals, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, 
why he was spending the winter in idleness in an 
American harbor, and his reply was, " I am 
here under sealed orders, to be broken only on a 
contingency which has not yet occurred." lie 
added also that the Russian men-of-war lying off 
San Francisco had received the same orders. 
He admitted in that same interview that his 
orders were to break the seals, if, while he 
remained at New York, the United States became 
involved in a war with any foreign nation. And 



ABRAHAM LINCOJ N 

the Russian Minister at Washington said to Mr. 
Seward that it was no unfriendly purpose which 
caused the prolonged stay of these men-of-war 
in American waters. A prominent American 
while in St. Petersburg subsequently was shown 
the Czar's orders to his Admiral, — sealed till 
then, — and they were to report to the President 
of 'the United States for duty in case our govern- 
ment became involved in a war with England. 
Looking now, — after forty years — upon the pages 
of that history which cannot in one jot or tittle 
be changed, is it not natural that we should hold 
for Russia most pleasant memories ? And may 
we not stop a moment when we hear of Russian 
reverses in the far East, and ask ourselves if all 
the sympathy that America has to bestow upon 
people of other lands, belongs entirely to yellow 
races ? Is it not at least profitable, just for one 
moment, to pause and ask, of two perils to the 
world, is the white peril liable to be more detri- 
mental to civilization than the yellow peril ? But 
I am not unmindful of the occasion that brings 
us here to-day and I stop with this passing 
comment on the unfortunate conditions that 
exist across many seas in the far Eastern por- 
tion of the globe. 

Those were trying clays indeed, when the 
nation, all unprepared, had to meet the well 
disciplined leaders of rebellion and conquer suc- 
cess. Few men knew the trials that beset the 
pathway of the President of the Nation. There 

28 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he financial question to be < onsid< red. 
relations \\ ith othei na1 ions « ami I i idly to the 
front. There were questions pertaining to the 
Navy, whoso ships were scattered to the foui 
winds of I [eaven b) the conspiratoi 
been hatching treason for months under the 
weak administration that preceded that oi Lin- 
coln. There were questions in the law d< 
ment, — questions in the postoffice department, 
and last, but by no means the least, there w 
army to be organized and put into the field. For 
months alter the southern states had passed th< n 
Ordinances of Secession the United States 
Government was reaching out all over th; I 
sunny south land by its postal facilities and was 
delivering mails to citizens at their doors the 
same as though there was no armed resisl 
organized and established against the authorit) 
that was thus peacefully and quietly doing its 
duty toward them. Then again, it was by no 
means a trivial matter that the great 1 'resident 
must consider when he turned to the legal 
questions that confronted him. He was not 
elected President to destroy a Constitutio 
he said in that first immortal Inaugural Address, 
but he was elected to preserve it. Under the 
Constitution slavery existed in a large portion oi 
the country and existed by right of State Con- 
stitutions and laws. Under the compact the 
Government had no power to abolish slavery in 
these States. Abraham Lincoln, with clear 

29 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

foresight, with unerring precision, saw the diffi- 
culties that confronted him, knew better than 
any legal adviser could tell him where his line of 
duty extended, and knew well, that until it 
became a necessity as a war measure for the 
purpose of overthrowing those who were in arms 
against the Government, he had no power to 
interfere with the institution established by state 
enactment. We do not forget when there were 
not in the English language vituperative express- 
ions strong enough, in the minds of radicals and 
rebel sympathisers, with which to assail the 
President. We do not forget how the adminis- 
tration was importuned to adopt a different policy 
than it was pursuing, how men, high in party 
councils, strong in national reputations, big with 
success achieved in their own walks in life, in 
editorial work, on the floors of legislative halls, 
on the rostrum and in the pulpit, assailed the 
methods, the purposes, the honesty, integrity 
and patriotism of one who has gone down in 
history as one of the purest, noblest, most 
unselfish and patriotic men who ever breathed 
the free air of a free nation. If time would 
permit me, I could easilv give instances where, 
smarting under the calumny heaped upon him 
both by friend and foe, this grand man sought to 
respond to these attacks, and, as we look ever 
the history to-day, we see how successfully he 
accomplished his purpose. 

I have said that I had no personal acquaintance 

30 



A.BRAH \ V. I 

with Abraham Lincoln when h( ■!« 
first [naugura] 

that memorable March daw hov 
tune led me to the Capital and for 

was placed in a position where I v. 

frequent contact with the man w 

we revere. Frequently have I taken his hand, 

or more properly speaking, have I felt his 

great hand encircling my own. He v\ 

man. 1 1c wai i ous man. when 

his hand closed around your own, an 

own was loosed, you could but say that il 

sped 1)}" the hand of a gianl 
senses than one. I (e may have been an aw i 
man as we measure the personality and M 
tility of men, but, as I think of him to-day, 1 
cannot think of him as an awkward mac. 
extreme length of limb may sometimes have 
a little embarassing to him when meeting small 
men, but he was none too tall, none t< o large, 
and I feel that he was in all particulars just the 
man in stature that was needed to stand at the 
helm of the Ship of State while it plowed it- 
way through the tempestuous seas from ' 
1865. I stood almost where I could lay 1 1) 
hand upon his when, on the front steps 
National Capitol on the 4th da) of March. [865, 
after four years of bitter trial— four long 
of cruel war — and after coming in sight of tin- 
white peaks that signalled the coming day, he 
delivered his second Inaugural Address 

31 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

again took the oath of office as President of the 
United States. That address was brief ; it 
hardly required five minutes in which to deliver 
it, but it contained all that was needed. I 
remember how disappointed I was as I stood 
there and heard the final words. It seemed to 
me that he had omitted something he ought to 
say. Now, however, as I read it over again, I 
feel that it was complete. Note the devout 
prayer as it fell from the lips of the great Presi- 
dent, — " Fondly do we hope, fervently do we 
pray, that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away ; yet if it be God's will that 
it continue until the wealth piled by bondsmen 
by two hundred and fifty years' unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
with the sword, as was said three thousand years 
ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

" With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to 
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work 
we are in, to bind up the nations' wounds, to care 
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for 
his widow and orphans ; to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all nations." 

A few weeks later, the nation was electrified 
by the news from Appomattox. I sat at my desk 
three evenings later when I heard the sweet 

32 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

strains of music from a passing procession. Still 
instinct with a box's love of music and I 
always quite ready to follow a band I joined 
the procession and stood under the President's 
window at the White House. There I 
him deliver the last speech he ever made to the 
American people. It was the calm delil 
statement of a man full of experience, ho] 
for the future, anxious to make no mistakes, 
with a heartfelt feeling of charity to those who 
had been misguided in their attack upon the 
general Government. He carefully outlined 
rules for action in strict compliance with his 
second Inaugural Address. Only two days after 
that memorable evening under the President's 
window, I saw Abraham Lincoln for the last 
time. It was Good Friday, lie was in the full 
strength of his manhood, flushed with a sense oi 
victory that was then crowning the efforts he had 
been making for a period of more than four 
years. I sat in a front seat in the dress circle of 
Ford's Theatre. Laura Keene and her troupe 
were on the stage ; there was a commotion back 
of the dress circle; and I arose with the audi- 
ence to welcome to the play the man whom almost 
everyone had then learned to love. I thought, as 
I saw him come unguarded into the gathering 
that night, that someone had blundered, for there 
were lying on the table of Cabinet Ministers at 
the moment confidential messages from foreign 
countries, some of which had passed through my 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

own hands, which, alone should have prompted 
those who were watching over the safety of the 
President to keep near his person, whether he 
willed it or not, sufficient protection to guard 
against any possible disaster. Fearless in all his 
lifetime, because he felt that he had nothing to 
fear from men, he had never hesitated to assume 
any risks that might possibly be thrown upon 
him in the honest discharge of his duties. I saw 
him ride to the front where bullets were making 
music in the ears of those in his company, when 
General Early threw his army north of the 
Capitol in 1864, but Abraham Lincoln feared no 
bullets, nor cannon balls, nor assassins' knives, 
and he went boldly and fearlessly wherever it 
seemed to him that duty called him. No Cabinet 
Minister was lax in duty, for the President would 
not consent that a guard should follow or protect 
him. He gave no credit to stories of plots of 
assassination and would not believe that the 
country held one who would be so depraved as 
to wish to do him bodily harm. And so on that 
sad Good Friday night in 1865, unguarded except 
by consciousness of integrity, he entered Ford's 
Theatre, received the greetings of glad hearts, 
smiled and bowed his head in a winning manner, 
and passed into the box, whence one brief hour 
afterward I saw him borne away by soldier hands 
to the house across the street, where on the 
following morning his spirit went to join the in- 
numerable host of boys in blue, boys, who, if they 

34 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

were lure to-day, would wear the bronze button 
•on the lapel of their coats, boys who had been 
where bullets were thick, where cannon balls 
had been all-powerful and whose memorj we 
cherish 'and revere with that of the Martyr 
President and in whose honor we scatter flowers 
on the 30th day of every Maw 

The whole world wept at the bier of Abraham 
Lincoln. While living, men could revile him and 
mock him, could point to his ungainly manner, 
his homely person and his more homely expres- 
sions and stories, but dead, the tongue of calumny 
was still. Suddenly the true worth of the man ; 
the full measure of his ability ; the high standard 
of his surpassing intellect and the devotion of 
his life were recognized. Those homely expres- 
sions and stories will live when the men who 
reviled him and them shall have been forgotten 
for more than a thousand years. The world 
appreciated Abraham Lincoln when it could own 
him no more. I have in my library a volume as 
large as an unabridged dictionary that is devoted 
to tributes to the memory of Abraham Lincoln 
gathered from the world. Men vied with one 
another to extol his virtues and pay tribute to 
his worth. Poets sang of him, orators pro- 
nounced eulogies over him, and at last, but only 
when his lips were sealed forever, he was recog- 
nized at his full value by the whole world. I [is 
name to-day is enrolled among the names of the 

35 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

great of all times and of all lands, and his figure 
stands in every Hall of Fame. 

Lord Beaconsfield, who himself, was one of 
the greatest minds that England has produced. 
said of the sad event that had removed the great 
President from the head of the Nation, that,— 
" In the character of the victim, and even in the 
accessories of his last moments, there is some- 
thing so homely and innocent that it takes the 
question, as it were, out of all the pomp of his- 
tory and the ceremonial of diplomacy, — it touches 
the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic 
sentiment of mankind. Whatever the various 
and varying opinions * * * on the policy of 
the late President of the United States, all must 
agree that in one of the severest trials which ever 
tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his 
duty with simplicity and strength. Nor is it 
possible for the people of England at such a 
moment to forget that he sprang from the same 
fatherland and spoke the same mother tongue." 

It is with feelings of pleasure that I quote 
these words from the eminent English states- 
man, especially in contradistinction of the lan- 
guage so freely indulged in, and which I have 
so liberally quoted in a preceding portion of my 
address. 

It was left, however, for Henry Ward Beecher, 
in his inimitable manner, two days after the sad 
event that took from us our beloved Lincoln, to 
speak words that feelingly indicate the true char- 

36 



ABRAHAM i 

acter ot the man that had learned so well to live 
From Plymouth Church pulpit the greal G 
gational minister among other things said, " B) 
day and by night, he trod a way of dange 
darkness. On Ins shoulders rested a governmenl 
dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity 
millions of men were striking at home, 
this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood 
like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and 
every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. 
Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and 
anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and 
in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, 
noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln." 
# * * " He wrestled ceaselessly through four 
black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein 
God was cleansing the sin of his people as by 
fire." * * * " Even he who now sleeps has, 
by this event, been clothed with new influence 
Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly heai 
what before they refused to listen to. Now his 
simple and weighty words will be gathered like 
those of Washington, and your children and 
your children's children shall be taught to ponder 
the simplicity and dee]) wisdom of utterances, 
which, in their time, passed, in part)' heat, as idle 
words. Men will receive a new impulse oi 
patriotism for his sake and will guard with zeal the 
whole country which beloved so well." 

"Four years ago, O Illinois, we took 
your midst an untried man and from among th 

37 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

people. We return him to you a mighty con- 
queror. Not thine any more, but the nation's ; 
not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye 
prairies. In the midst of this great continent 
his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads 
who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew 
their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move 
over the mighty places of the West, chant his 
requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose 
blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for 
fidelity, for law, for liberty." 

Abraham Lincoln has enriched the English 
language. He has left on many pages of our 
history words that will live when this generation 
and many that succeed it will all be forgotten. 
Many of his speeches are classic. To-day they 
are placed side by side with the great speeches 
of all ages. They are in and of themselves gems 
of literature. Homely, in a way unattractive, in 
a sense lacking what some people might call 
refinement, and yet, not homely, but attractive 
and because genuine and true possessing the 
truest, highest and sweetest refinement. His 
personality stands out big against the horizon 
of well remembered history. Edward Everett 
delivered a great address when the Nation's 
representatives met on the hallowed ground of 
Gettysburg to dedicate it as a national cemetery, 
ft was a studied, scholarly, refined production. 
It will boar reading over and over again. It is 
replete with beautiful sentiment, well rounded 

3S 



ABRAHAM LIN< <>I.\ 

sentences, magnificent in its diction, in its 
erudition, in its every element. He had 
days, undoubtedly, putting together the beautiful 
expressions contained in it, but the two score 
lines of the address delivered by Abraham Liu- 
coin on that occasion come down to us to-da) 
almost like words of Holy Writ. They are this 
day being pronounced all over this continent on 
celebrations of this National holiday. It is 
related, that, with pencil and the blank side oi a 
used envelope, in a car while on his way to the 
battlefield, Abraham Lincoln wrote the address. 
True, this story is denied. Some of his 
biographers, who ought to know, tell us he pre- 
pared it carefully in the quiet of his room. Be 
that as it may, it matters little; Tins we know, 
that the brief address delivered by Abraham 
Lincoln at the dedication of the National Ceme- 
tery at Gettysburg, on the 19th day of Novem- 
ber, 1863, is to-day one of the most beautiful 
and touching classics in the English Language. 
I am loath to pronounce the closing words of 
my address. I love to dwell upon the beauties 
of the character of the immortal President. It 
seems but yesterday that I looked into his care- 
worn but honest face and felt my hand encircled 
by his, but Abraham Lincoln has passed from 
the visible to the invisible. The incident in life 
that comes once, and but once, to all men, has 
come to him. He watches where we cannot see 
while we move on to perfect the work he could 

39 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

not remain to finish. The Civil War is over but 
our tasks are not all dene. There are other- 
battles to fight for freedom, other victories to 
win. He, with a "cloud of witnesses," boys in 
blue and boys in gray, an innumerable host, is 
watching that we work well the problem still 
unsolved. Though invisible, he speaks to us, his 
voice ringing down the corridors of Time, as it 
wiJI continue to do, to generations yet unborn, 
inciting us and them to better deeds and better 
lives. His words, — first spoken at Gettysburg 
in 1863, — reach and apply to every foot of 
American soil. " In a large sense," he said, 
"we cannot dedicate, — we cannot consecrate, — 
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, 
living and dead, who struggled here, have con- 
secrated it far above our power to add or detract. 
The world will little note nor long remember, 
what we say here, but it can never forget what 
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to 
be dedicated here to the unfinished work that 
they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is 
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us, that from these honored 
dead we take increased devotion to that cause 
for which they here gave the last full measure of 
devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that Government of the people, by the 
people and for the people, shall not perish fr< >m 

the earth." . 

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